Is That Your Boy?: Cad Bane...Is That Your Boy?

He's kind of a bastard. But that's a good quality in a villain.

So the second season of the animated Star Wars series The Clone Wars began a couple of weeks ago on the Cartoon Network. The first season was kind of a mixed bag as far as quality and tone but the new season has started off on a strong note as the Jedi face a new antagonist created for the series, the bounty hunter Cad Bane, a cunning and resourceful villain who brings a genuine air of darkness and danger to the show. And he is badass.

You don't want to know what an apartment like this goes for on Coruscant.

Cad Bane was introduced in the first season finale, and promised more bounty hunter action to come. Bounty hunters have been a big part of Star Wars lore from the beginning, when Greedo attempted to apprehend Han Solo in the Mos Eisley Cantina and later with the introduction of Boba Fett. There is a strong Western influence on Star Wars and Cad Bane is visually inspired by Lee Van Cleef's characters in classic spaghetti westerns like For A Few Dollars More. He is starting to take his place in the pantheon of Star Wars badassery that includes Darth Vader, the Fetts, Darth Maul and General Grevious.

...and he hangs out with French models.

Bane is voiced by veteran performer Cory Burton (who you might remember as Shockwave in the original Transformers series as well as Transformers Animated). He is an alien based on a couple of the background creatures from the famous cantina sequence in the original Star Wars movie and attentive viewers will notice that his voice processing matches the snippet of dialogue we hear from those two, which is great attention to detail. He has a trace of a foreign accent that seems at once Peter Lorre with a tinge of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The animation in the second season has already surpassed anything from season 1, and Bane is brought to life with a great deal of subtlety and nuance which combines with the terrific vocal work from Burton to create a truly memorable character.

And that was probably the nicest thing he did that day.

These first few episodes of second season of The Clone Wars signify that the show is moving into a darker and more adult direction. In the first trilogy of episodes alone, we have a Jedi tortured to death (mostly on camera), prisoner abuse, Ahsoka captured and beat up and babies kidnapped for some sort of Sith expiramentation. I feel like the show is starting to channel Battlestar Galactica, which is not a bad thing.

But seriously, what is with those cheek-hoses?